Kenny Chesney shares ‘Summer in 3D’

Click to see a gallery of photos from Kenny Chesney's 2008 stop in Nashville during his Poets & Pirates tour.

It’s supposed to be a feel-good affair, this Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D movie. It’s largely a concert film, with sing-alongs, smiles, beach balls, electric guitars and the like.

But near the movie’s end, things change.

Chesney is shown on stage in Indianapolis, at the same massive arena where the NCAA Final Four was recently held. The place was full, as most places are when Chesney — country’s top-drawing performer of the new century — plays a show. The singer was wrapping up his 2009 summer tour with the wistful “Better as a Memory,” and he was exhausted.

Chesney stood on stage, overcome with the emotion that he’d felt was muted through much of the tour. Trying to choke back tears, he could not sing, and so the crowd sang for him.

“At that moment, I really didn’t know if I was ever going to do it again,” said Chesney, who has taken a break from touring this summer. “I was so tired. During that time, I’d lay in bed and go, ‘I don’t know.’ I’d given my soul to this. You give enough of your soul and don’t put anything back, sooner or later you’re going to be an empty guy.”

‘You can’t connect like that’

In Summer in 3D, which opened on Wednesday, April 21 in Nashville, Chesney doesn’t appear to be an empty guy. He’s singing, playing guitar, jumping around on massive stages and interacting with his band. With plans to take a year off from touring after a remarkable and remarkably grueling decade, Chesney was something like a NASCAR driver who runs out of gas in the home stretch yet still crosses the finish line first.

The 3D setting allows viewers a sense of the scale of Chesney’s stadium shows, and the camera shots provide perspective from the stage to the top rows of the massive, NFL football stadiums Chesney was playing.

“I’ve always wished the fans could see what I see, and with this they can,” said Chesney, who emerged somehow refreshed after spending hundreds of hours in the film’s editing process. “And I got to see it all from places I can’t usually see, too. In editing, I could get the enormity of this thing. It was good for me to be able to reflect on all this, and to wrap my arms around it. Somehow, you wind up inspired.”

Chesney had dealt with exhaustion in the past, usually through means not available to most of us who haven’t collected millions of dollars for our efforts: Say, wintering in the Virgin Islands. He’ll also admit that loss of purpose and inspiration are things less-celebrated people go through every day. He is, he knows, a lucky fellow.

He is also nothing if not committed to delivering a show that would validate his place as the guy who has earned unprecedented success as a Nashville-based live act. Even Garth Brooks did not tour the United States as voraciously or with such outsized results: Chesney has sold a million tickets, eight years in a row. And the competitor in Chesney deems any night that didn’t feel transcendent to be a failure.

“There were times when I thought, ‘If I have to get up there and sing “Big Star” one more time, I’m gonna die,’ ” he said, unsmiling at the memory. “And you can’t connect like that. And you can’t be up there thinking, ‘I’m not connecting like I want to.’ I mean, that won’t help. That’s why I decided I had to take a year away . . . for the integrity of me and the band and what we do, and for the fans. I thought, ‘It’s going to be new again at some point, and that ain’t gonna be tomorrow.’ ”

Forced reflection

What he didn’t figure was that examining frame after frame of footage of himself doing the very thing that had tired him to the bone would be the best means of recharging.

Burned out on music, he watched himself make music, watched his band make music, and watched other people react to this. The footage came not only from six stadium shows on last year’s Sun City Carnival tour, but also from the first shows he did with his band, back when his gigging reality was opening for Lee Greenwood at a firemen’s benefit in Texas, or playing what amounted to country line-dance bars.

“Putting this together forced me to reflect, a lot,” he said. “I’d been so mechanical, in this cycle where we plan at one time, rehearse at one time, do a tour . . . it got to be a lot of business without enough music. This movie shows the journey from the beginning, though, and I sat there and watched this 17-year journey. Editing this, it consumed me. And at the end of it, I just wanted to pick up a guitar and play.”

With rare exceptions, that playing won’t be on major stages in 2010. Lately, he’s been in the studio, working with producer Buddy Cannon to finish a new album.

And then he plans to spend a lot of quality time with a battered old guitar that his singing, songwriting friend Mac McAnally gave him. It’s the guitar on which McAnally wrote “Down the Road” and “Back Where I Come From,” both of which Chesney has sung many nights on stage.

“That guitar, it’s not in the case,” Chesney said. “It’s in my house, on a little stand in the living room, so I can pick it up anytime I want. Which is a lot, now.”

Reach Peter Cooper at 615-259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.

KENNY CHESNEY: SUMMER IN 3D

NOW PLAYING: Opened Wednesday, April 21 at Green Hills 16, Hollywood 27, Opry Mills 20, Thoroughbred 20, Wynnsong 10, Wynnsong 16. The film is a limited engagement, open nationwide through May 2.RATED: No rating.RUN TIME: 1 hour, 37 minutes.DETAILS:www.KennyChesneyMovie.comABOUT THE FILM: The 3D footage was shot on six nights at five stops in Chesney’s 2009 summer tour: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, Foxboro and Indianapolis. But the film also contains footage from other Chesney shows throughout his career, as well as early photos.